Cycling Through a Montreal Winter (Compilation): youtu.be/p7dDSX26F34

This is what it looks like to follow along behind a bike lane snow plow.

If you only ever drive places, you might literally not know how to dress for your climate.

This is a common misconception, but legalizing apartments everywhere does not force apartments to be built. They will only get built if there’s unmet demand to live in them.

The “biggest remake of the bus network ever” will see Montreal’s bus network substantially reoriented around the REM. Fewer long-distance bus routes, especially towards downtown. More local buses, taking people to the REM for longer trips.

I just don’t see how blocking new housing from being built could *not* make it more expensive. How is that plausible?

NEW VIDEO: The Bikeshare Dilemma Bikeshares and scootershares (also known as “Shared Micromobility) is one of the fastest growing forms of transportation on the planet today, but cities appear deeply divided on how to manage them. youtu.be/qfz6AsYycA8

Would you expect that Copenhagen has roughly similar snowfall amounts to Raleigh, North Carolina? I would not. (Data: WeatherSpark.com)

step 1: ban apartments step 2: now everyone can afford to live in a spacious single family home with a yard and a garage close to school, work, and amenities step 3: utopia :D

There’s at least a longer discussion about these places not getting much snow. But to suggest that Denmark and the Netherlands don’t have anything to say on “rain, sleet, or wind”!?

there is also a trade-off between cost, space and location! if, for a given cost, you can either have a city apartment where you can walk to work, or a big house in car-dependent suburbia an hour's drive from the city, different people may make different choices, & it's good to have options

We really speed ran from “give me liberty or give me death” to “please sir I want some more”

This is a common misconception, but legalizing apartments everywhere does not force apartments to be built. They will only get built if there’s unmet demand to live in them.

I’m not surprised by the last generation of conservative leaders who are basically normal guys who like hockey and low taxes rather than Mencius Moldbug and Bronze Age Pervert

I just don’t get how a Quebec nationalist perspective could feel more threatened by China than the US. Even under Biden, they opposed Quebec’s language laws. (No joke: a US trade representative actually used the adjective “Quebecian” for Bill 96.) Trump’s team called it an unfair trade barrier.

The stupidest bike policy ever? Ireland is considering not just helmets but also *mandatory high-vis clothing* for cyclists!

I encounter mobility scooters using bike infrastructure somewhat often in Montreal. It seems to work fine, especially on bike lanes with room to pass.

Colorado’s Jared Polis is one of a few politicians in the US that consistently goes out of his way to put in a good word for Canada.

The article is about burdensome regulations on apartments (zoning, building code) vs SFH. And so far the replies are complaints about privacy, renting, not having a garden. As if those personal experiences and preferences justify unrelated regulations around staircases and sprinklers!

I get the compromise behind a seasonal bike lane. Skeptics might be more open if it’s removed when least used. The problem: it makes it very difficult to build a culture of winter cycling. You reinforce the seasonal disparity. No winter lanes → no winter cyclists → no need for lanes in winter

“How do you plan and design a city that is safe and functional while also leaving room for spontaneity and serendipity?” www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Toronto is lucky to have a lot of smart people pushing it to reach its potential on transit.

Say what you want about anything he did as Prime Minister: Stephen Harper believes Canada should continue to exist and is publicly saying so. #cdnpoli

One of the dumbest things about VIA Rail? Airline-style boarding.

YouTube recommends me streams of council meetings from places I’ve never even heard of. Like Guthrie, Oklahoma (population 10,000).

You can see which direction was morning rush hour.

The crisis is a shortage of housing. This is crystal clear in the data; rents go up when there are fewer empty homes on the market, and rents go down when landlords can’t find tenants for their rentals.

Where do you park/store your bike in winter? Is it different from the summer?

Daily reminder that the primary benefit of railway electrification is not to reduce railway emissions. It is to enable faster acceleration which reduces travel time and thereby increases frequency without adding operating cost. That then attracts more riders and thereby more revenue.

honestly i feel like the rest of Canada needs to do a better job at teaching French because Quebec politics is fascinating

Toronto is considering a rule change that would make backyard pools harder to build, for tree coverage reasons. Councillor Stephen Holyday, notorious for obstructing new things (especially new housing), thinks rules on pools go too far. ”In many ways, this [puts] trees before people.“

One problem with concentrating new housing development on commercial streets is that there are just far fewer commercial streets than residential ones. It would leave most of the city off-limits for density. Those European cities don’t do that.

It’s easy to say the city is “full” when you have housing and you’re just telling other people that *they* have to go away.

This Alberta separatism thing just feels so weird. Like it came out of nowhere. Yes, disputes with the feds over energy policy. Many resent the political power of Ontario and Quebec. But actually having a referendum on leaving Canada? Not something I would have predicted in a million years.

I get the compromise behind a seasonal bike lane. Skeptics might be more open if it’s removed when least used. The problem: it makes it very difficult to build a culture of winter cycling. You reinforce the seasonal disparity. No winter lanes → no winter cyclists → no need for lanes in winter

We have family living in a rural area 750 km away. They have an EV that they (usually) take to visit us. They take it instead of their big pickup truck (even in a Canadian winter). It’s nice.

Freeze your city’s buildings in amber, you might just find other things about your city changing. Affordability, youthfulness, culture, dynamism.

My shoulder replacement surgery went well, though I'm still in much discomfort. This will be my last for weeks. I grabbed the final shots just hours before my procedure and did a scrappy one-hand edit! I hope you ❤️ my first #sneckdown film in 7 years! #Urbanism www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOLA...

Funny enough, Oxford tried to be *more accommodating* to drivers by allowing residents a certain number of passes (instead of just blocking through-traffic like simpler traffic management plans). But that came across as “controlling people’s movement” and ignited conspiracy theories.

One supply skeptic says YIMBYism distracts from better solutions like funded vouchers to help pay for housing. Another supply skeptic says rising home prices reflect rising incomes, not zoning restrictions. (Implication: supplementing incomes with vouchers would just make prices rise.)

Now we can confirm what we’ve always known: this is a separatist government. www.ctvnews.ca/politics/art...

Richmond Street cycle track a week after the snowstorm. Completely impassable.

The nerve of a driver to get way too close to hitting me and then get mad at me after I stick my arm out to indicate “stop”!

This shows why two-way bike lanes handle winter worse. If this was a one-way lane, it would still be narrowed by the snow, and it would be harder to pass slower cyclists. But there wouldn’t be automatic directional conflicts like this.

Sunday morning cartoons in Canada.

Listening to @thelineca.bsky.social talk about Alberta separatists having “loser energy”: 🤣 When they randomly digress to saying the same about safe bike infrastructure advocates: 😬

Credit to this school board for seriously building workforce housing. But this only becomes so necessary in the context of a broader housing shortage. Ideally your housing isn’t tied to your job (like healthcare in the US).

I ❤️ Minneapolis This ride was incredible, especially our interactions with folks at the memorials and with neighbors cheering on from their windows/porches. ICE out, now.

Why do so many people forget that snow plows exist — but only when the topic is cycling?

One problem (of many) with “blue states joining Canada” is that the divide seems more urban/rural than between states. You wouldn’t think it from the unity and resistance in Minneapolis. But 47% of Minnesota voted for Trump!